For Sale

With spring time here and the horses about to loose their winter coats, it is time to take new pictures and revise our web site. We will be placing a different emphasis on our product, on precisely what it is that we sell.

I have come to realize that what we sell with our horses and with our riding programs is new lives. For those lives are already great, the horses make them even better. For those who hurt the horses heal. For those who are weak the horses strengthen. For those whose minds are tired the horses give rest.

When Emily came to ride she was a happy, wonderful little girl. She did not need healing, but a little touch of confidence would have made her life even better. She worked hard to overcome her fear after taking a surprise fall in the woods.

These two shots were taken last night. That is Valor that she is getting on. Until a few days ago Valor had never even had a blanket on her back. Until last night she had never had a bit in her mouth.

Until last night she had never had anyone on her back, not even a happy, confident little girl. Now she has.

I am proud of Emily. I am proud of Valor and, yes I admit it, I am proud of myself this morning.

Another Reason to Change

I have encouraged conventional riding programs to take a look at our program and see if there are elements in it that could be incorporated to put some of the fun back in riding and to give people the opportunity to really understand horses.

Lydia recently made me a loaf of crackling bread. Now, how many of you instructors in the normal "ride around the ring in a circle" programs have ever had a student make you a loaf of crackling bread? Crackling bread is the strongest evidence of a program with happy students.

Two Shots of Manteo

I received a request to post a picture of Manteo. The most recent of these is from October of 2008. We will be doing a lot more photography as spring arrives. Wanchese is perhaps the prettiest horse on the farm. He is petite. He is a Shackleford and I plan to breed him to Swimmer at some point in the future but not until we have produced more pure Corollas in the off site breeding program.

They Look Smaller Up Close

In a previous comment Dianne raised a few points concerning the size of the wild horses of Corolla. One of the points is easy to address. There definitely is enough habitat for a herd of 150 healthy horses in the 4 wheel drive area. The other questions touch on the issue of the size of the individual horses in the wild. I will agree that the horses are, on average, shorter than they were when they were while feasting on the fertilized vegetation outside of the 4-wheel drive area some 25 years ago. Secondly, in my limited observation it appears that prenatal nutrition has a greater impact on horse size than post natal nutrition. (Weanlings who are raised in captivity do not seem to reach the size of those born in captivity.)

The herd manager, Wesley Stallings, is a meticulous recorder of pictures and information on the wild herd and his photos and observations will be of more value than my observation of the herd, which only occurs several times each year. However, my observations lead me to the conclusion that there is a type of Corolla wild horse that looks more like the smaller horses of Shackleford. I will call them the Red Feather type. The Red Feather type seems to produce a more successful and more aggressive stallion than the larger Croatoan type.

As a long time volunteer with the Corolla Wild Horse Fund told me, "Those mean little stallions take a lot of the mares."

I also agree that the domestic Bankers produced by Dale Burrows were larger than the wild herd. It is my understanding that he often bred stock that contained a mixture of Corolla and Shackleford blood. I do not understand genetics, but I can see and it is obvious to my eyes that when a Corolla stallion is bred to a non Corolla mare the resulting foal is in nearly every case significantly larger than one would expect from simply looking at the height of the parents. This is true whether the mother is a registered Appaloosa, a BLM, or a grade Quarter horse. It has been suggested by those with experience in the matter that breeding a thirteen hand Corolla to a Thirteen hand Corolla will likely produce a thirteen hand foal, but that breeding a thirteen hand Corolla to a 12.2 Shackleford will often result in offspring around fourteen hands.

Lastly, for those who think that the wild herd members are much smaller than they were on average when viewed twenty years ago, I can only say, put a stick on it. From a distance the wild horses invariably look larger than they are, especially when framed by the low level brush and shrubs that make up much of the vegetation of the 4-wheel drive area. We have been surprised every single time we first put a measuring stick on a captured wild Corolla. Often people with life long horse experience over estimate the horses height by a full hand.

Some of the wild Corollas are larger and the great thing about them is that they maintain Spanish type although they are taller. (This is not the norm for Spanish horses. Unfortunately, the taller they are the less typier they tend to be). The mare pictured above is the tallest mare that I have personally seen in the wild. Today she will join my herd and will become part of the off site breeding program.

I have no interest in recklessly breeding horses to simply make them larger. For example, I will not breeder her to our largest stallion, Croatoan. Instead I will breed her to Manteo, who has even more of a classic Spanish type than does the mare.
Someday I hope to breed this mare to my little Shackleford stallion, but not yet.

The mare has been known as Swimmer, but at 4:00 pm today she will become Betsy Dowdy. Perhaps in the next post I will tell you a bit about the original Betsy Dowdy who was a 16 year old girl that I would have loved to have had in our riding program. The girl was tough.

Wild and Free--In the Bahamas?

Recently the question has arisen concerning placing some Corollas in the Caribbean in order to insure survival of the strain. The idea has been floated by people genuinely interested in preserving the horses.

However, I would discourage such an effort. It is true that the Corollas are fighting for every inch of land necessary for their survival in the wild. It is true that their biggest enemy is further development of their last enclave in the northern Outer Banks. It is true that the management agreement entered into years ago with various governmental bureaucracies would require so few horses to remain in the wild that genetic collapse would be assured.

With all of that said, I am optimistic that a herd of wild Corollas will be on the Outer Banks for my great grand children to see long after I am gone. I do not think such belief to be wholly unrealistic.

I base my hope on the following:

Karen McCalpin, executive director of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund is absolutely dedicated, immensely talented, and, most importantly, tough as an old hickory tree. Her small staff shares her zeal and dedication.

The wild herd draws millions of tourist dollars to the Outer Banks every year. That drawing power translates into political support. The question will remain whether that economically based political support can trump the political power of the developers who would pave more, build more, and bulldoze more until there was no room left for the horses. At this moment my money is on those who live continually on tourism instead of the one shot, get rich quick plans of developers.

The Shacklefords have made it to the promised land and the threat that they faced was every bit as grave as that faced by the Corollas today.

The problem with relocation of the herd to any other place is that it would give the economic opponents of the horses a perfect hand to play. They could claim that they not only are not destroying the horses, but instead are helping to provide the only realistic way to save them which is to move them out to a new reservation where they could live happily as long as the sun rises and the waters flow. (Such assurances cause every non-white chromosome in my body to shudder. History is wracked with inconvenient truths.)

Lastly, I must admit that I simply have faith that these horses will be saved. They are older than any trees on the Outer Banks. They are survivors. Years ago I took a peak at the last part of the Bible to see how the story would end. Turns out that the good guys do win in the end.

But I am not Polly Anna. I have grave concerns about the future of the off site breeding program. This spring I will breed four pure Corolla mares to several different Corolla stallions. One of those yet to be conceived foals will be going to a breed preservationist in Tennessee but the others have yet to be claimed. I recently had two Corolla mares fall into my hands. We are in the process of fencing in about twenty acres of mixed hardwood forest which will provide a tremendous amount of forage for my herd in the spring and summer and will greatly decrease the amount that I spend on hay, but feed costs will remain oppressive.

I was recently asked in an interview "What funds the off site breeding program?" The question caught me so off guard that honesty over came diplomacy and I listened in surprise as my mouth blurted out, "My damn back pocket!"

Which brings me to my last reasons to be optimistic about the future of the herd. My little riders love the fact that they are part of the effort to save these horses. I strongly suspect that I have a future Karen McCalpin or two amongst my riders. And surely, surely somewhere out there are a few fifty year old men who have come to realize that they have never lived up to their potential, that they are facing an old age filled with too many regrets and too few accomplishments, but that it is not too late to make a mark in the world by saving these horses. Some of them might even be rich.

So, that is why my little riders and I work so hard to keep these horses in the public eye. We are glad to be part of something bigger than we are. We are not above doing stunts to draw attention to these horses, as everyone who saw the last Christmas Parade can attest. We ride them fifty miles in a day, not because it is fun to do so, but because we draw attention to the horses by doing so.

This Friday I plan to ride 100 Hundred Miles in less than 24 hours accompanied by Emily and Lydia on strings of four horses each, 9 of whom will be either Corollas or Shacklefords. I must admit that it causes my faith to waver a bit. One can look through the entire Bible without finding a comforting word about saddle sores.